Father remembers teen killed in crash as former Lions player Reggie Rogers dies

By
Paul Kampe, The Oakland Press

Friday, October 25, 2013

Waterford Township resident Robert Willett published an “In Memoriam” remembrance Sunday, Oct. 20, marking the 25th anniversary of his teenage son’s death in a tragic car crash. On Thursday night, he received a phone call informing him the perpetrator, former Detroit Lions first-round pick Reggie Rogers, had died.
Rogers killed 19-year-old Kenneth Willett and his cousins, Dale Ess,17; and Kelly Ess, 18, in a drunken driving accident in 1988. Rogers was the only survivor in the crash, suffering only a broken neck in the crash.
Rogers, who had a blood-alcohol level of 0.15 (Michigan’s legal limit was 0.10 at the time), was convicted of negligent homicide in December 1989. He was not convicted on any alcohol-related charges in the accident and was sentenced to just one year in jail. Rogers eventually returned to the NFL, albeit briefly, and accrued six more drunken driving convictions in his lifetime.

“I feel bad for his children, but I feel like the world is a safer place,” said Willett, now 67. “He was on a road of self-destruction. I’m surprised he never killed anyone else.”
Rogers, 49, was the seventh overall pick in the 1987 NFL Draft by the Lions. He was found dead Thursday in Seattle. A cause of death has not been determined by autopsy but reportedly could have been caused by a drug overdose.
Willett said Rogers never apologized for his role in the accident, when he failed to heed a stoplight on the Woodward Avenue loop in downtown Pontiac.
“How can you forgive someone who never had any remorse,” Willett said. “He could have said anything.
“I’m not a bitter person. I can’t change the hand that was dealt to me. I refuse to let it destroy me.”
Willett still gives victim impact statements on a monthly basis at the Oakland County Schools complex in Waterford Township.
“I’ve made my own mistakes,” he said. “It’s what you do after that.
“I want it to be a safer place for everybody.”
After Rogers’ most recent drunken driving offense in 2011, his attorney claimed the former NFL player was suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain injury found in some former football players and featured in the recent PBS “Frontline” documentary “League of Denial” about concussions in the NFL.
“The lights are on, but nobody’s home,” Seattle-based attorney Kevin Trombold said of Rogers at the time.Rogers recently pleaded not guilty to a domestic violence charge after allegedly hitting his wife in the head with a flashlight during an Oct. 7 argument about his alcohol consumption habits.